Hosting Recommendations

[WSWD]

Are your servers in the US?

Yes sir. LA and Dallas.

 

[rdn]

Fyi, downtime cannot be blame into the hosting all the time.
Sometimes it's a mis-configuration of a forum.
I have used xfhost.net for closely 3 months, I can prove that Mike Edges know what's his doing and all his staff.

 

[TPerry]

Fyi, downtime cannot be blame into the hosting all the time.
Sometimes it's a mis-configuration of a forum.
I have used xfhost.net for closely 3 months, I can prove that Mike Edges know what's his doing and all his staff.

Correct. And there was that period that OVH had him screwed up before he decided to move to another data center. I think since he's been there the problem has not occurred again... at least I know there were only a few short period of times that ServerComplete had the network down (one was to replace either some routers or switches and they let me know in advance and were only down about 10 minutes).
And no, I don't (and haven't) used him (have my own dedicated servers and 1 VPS) so I have no dog in the hunt.
Sometimes pooky happens outside the control of the hosting provider.

 

[Amaury]

Sometimes pooky happens outside the control of the hosting provider.

Like adverse weather, for example.

Depending on how you're connected, things may or may not be affected. For example, during our storms, our DirecTV satellite will sometimes go out. However, our Internet won't because the cable for it is underground and can't be affected by adverse weather.

 

[Slavik]

Right. That’s enough. @Adam Howard and @Mike Edge your tit for tat arguments have gone on long enough here on XenForo.

You obviously have issues with each other, you have BOTH been warned to drop in in the past, and you both fail to use the ignore function.

The staff here have better things to do than babysit the pair of you day in and day out. And no, the arguments that either of you have reported posts will not hold, because you both then publicly post anyway.

Consider this your final warning to drop it once and for all. Provocative comments either way to each other, even disguised as "opinion" or "review" will not be accepted any more.

 

[WSWD]

Correct. And there was that period that OVH had him screwed up before he decided to move to another data center. I think since he's been there the problem has not occurred again... at least I know there were only a few short period of times that ServerComplete had the network down (one was to replace either some routers or switches and they let me know in advance and were only down about 10 minutes).

And this is exactly why the datacenter is just as important (or more so) than the host itself. All hosts should be up-front and honest about the datacenter. Unfortunately, most clients never ask. I'd say it's less than 1% for us. Is it OVH, which is renowned for its bargain-basement pricing and continual network/support issues, or one of the big boys known for their rock-solid stability? And I'm sorry, but when hosts choose the cheapest datacenter option available to them, just to make a few extra bucks, they are just as much to blame as the datacenter itself.

Not saying that's the case with anybody in this thread, but it happens all the time in this industry...all the time. And again, this comes down to the clients doing their homework and asking the host.

@Tracy Perry, The network should never be down to replace routers/switches, as that means there is no redundancy in place. That's a bad situation. Of course, you also aren't running a business off your website, and at the prices you're paying for your boxes, it's a great deal. I'm sure you don't expect 100% uptime. But if I were running a business/hosting company in that datacenter and heard that the network would be going down to replace a switch/router, I'd be gone the next day.

@Amaury, weather should never affect a datacenter, unless it's something major like a hurricane, or earthquake with building collapse, or mass flooding or what have you. Satellites (i.e. your DirecTV example) is a completely different story. But a datacenter should make it through basically any storm, power outage, etc. It should take a pretty major event to knock a datacenter offline.

 

[TPerry]

A
@Tracy Perry, The network should never be down to replace routers/switches, as that means there is no redundancy in place. That's a bad situation. Of course, you also aren't running a business off your website, and at the prices you're paying for your boxes, it's a great deal. I'm sure you don't expect 100% uptime. But if I were running a business/hosting company in that datacenter and heard that the network would be going down to replace a switch/router, I'd be gone the next day.

From what I understood it mainly effected those that were on the $55 base dedicated severs. I didn't really worry to much about downtime since mine is pure hobby.

 

[WSWD]

From what I understood it mainly effected those that were on the $55 base dedicated severs. I didn't really worry to much about downtime since mine is pure hobby.

Exactly! It's a cheap server for a hobby site that isn't mission-critical. Unfortunately, I guarantee you there are hosting companies using servers in that datacenter...probably the same $55/mo. boxes even. And they might never encounter problems aside from small 10 minute downtimes here and there for equipment replacement. Most clients probably won't even notice, or care if you keep them informed in advance. But if something goes wrong and there is no redundancy in place, things could get real bad real fast. You could potentially be talking about days in a row of downtime.

As well, a lot of the "big players" in the datacenter industry have their share of troubles too. Softlayer, for example has had some horrible things happen with their tech. support, and they are in every way a premium datacenter, right down to the ridiculous pricing for hardware.

So what the hell is one to do? You just kinda go with a good datacenter and hope you get lucky and things go well. When we first started out a very long time ago, we co-located in Phoenix and leased servers from ThePlanet (pre-Softlayer merger). They were the big boys at the time. Very expensive, but very good. We literally went years with 100% network/power uptime. I have screenshots on an external hard drive somewhere of a production hosting server (Pentium IV, if I recall) with over 8 years of uptime! LOL!! We retired it without a single minute of downtime on the server itself or the network. It's now a footrest in my office. ha ha!

These days, it just seems you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. You're likely going to see a little bit of downtime regardless of who you use. We had 4 minutes of downtime with Quadranet last week, because a UPS blew up and took out a bunch of other stuff with it. All the redundant stuff blew up. Aside from that, I've never had downtime with them. But it goes to show that things happen, even in the really good datacenters. The other datacenter we use has had zero downtime in 2 years (knock on wood). But we also had RAID cards and other hardware fail, which of course resulted in a few hours of downtime as well.

So after 5 paragraphs...who knows? With any host or any datacenter, there is the opportunity for downtime. That's what happens when you deal with mechanical equipment, especially on a large scale. It's just a matter of mitigating the downtime.

So to get the thread back on track and answer the OP's question with as unbiased a recommendation for hosting you're going to get from me...go with who gives you good service, the best uptime possible, and cares about you as a client. Send a few emails to Sales and see what kind of feeling you get. You can normally tell in the first few emails if they are copying and pasting canned responses out of some book and just treating you like Hosting Client #883725326, or if there is a genuine and thorough response to your emails, for example. Does it take days to get a response, or a couple hours at most? Are your questions actually answered? The huge hosts normally consider you as nothing more than a number and $5/mo. If they lose you, there are thousands of other suckers...errrr...clients out there to replace you. The smallers hosts ( @Mike Edge for example) are probably going to care a lot more, and are more likely to treat you like a person instead of a number. Avoid the EIG brands at all costs, and go with a company that fits your specific needs as a client.

Whew!